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Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit?

#61

Post by taylodl »

eugeniub wrote: post #54
SkipperCat wrote: post #27

My question is why would you want to do that? You're just going to come against the same issues and problems that Reddit has, especially if you want to achieve anything close to Reddit's scale. You'll need staff, money, legal and tech folks (not cheap). And to get the funds, you'll prob have to make the same decisions about ads and API fees. You could pull off something smaller, maybe by being distributed or whatnot,…

Reddit used to have pretty low overhead. You couldn't upload/host videos directly on Reddit, you could only share links or create self-posts. They didn't have all these superfluous features that they have now like live chat, push notifications, cryptocurrency wallets, first-party mobile apps, etc. A "classical" version of Reddit would be a fraction of the development and hosting cost compared to modern Reddit, especi…

Think this all the way through - why did Reddit do these things? To attract more users and to generate revenue. As the OP said, what are you going to do to solve Reddit's income problem? This isn't a technical issue, the technical piece is straightforward and well-known.

They can't really push for advertising until they eliminate 3rd party API access to the content. That or they have to start charging a usage fee.

Which is interesting. One option they do have is to charge the user for using Reddit via an API, not the apps using the API. If you want to access Reddit via a 3rd party app then you'll have to pay for it - say something on the order of $1.99 per month or $19.99 for the year. I imagine they must have explored that option, so it makes me wonder why they abandoned it.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit?

#62

Post by cjs_ac »

dmortin wrote: post #10
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #2

Overcoming reddit as a startup has a massive obstacle, moderation and removal of unwanted content. It's something that's not well automated, and thus requires an enormous amount of labor (ie capital) This is why those who have tried have turned into racist pornography filled shit holes. Want to start a billion dollar startup? Figure out how to automate this problem.

> It's something that's not well automated, and thus requires an enormous amount of labor (ie capital) This is why those who have tried have turned into racist pornography filled shit holes. Want to start a billion dollar startup? Figure out how to automate this problem. Can't modern AI help with that? I'd guess GPT is pretty good at determining sentiment like racism. Try it with ChatGpt, ask it determine if a senten…

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit?

#63

Post by Madmallard »

taylodl wrote: post #61
eugeniub wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit used to have pretty low overhead. You couldn't upload/host videos directly on Reddit, you could only share links or create self-posts. They didn't have all these superfluous features that they have now like live chat, push notifications, cryptocurrency wallets, first-party mobile apps, etc. A "classical" version of Reddit would be a fraction of the development and hosting cost compared to modern Reddit, especi…

Think this all the way through - why did Reddit do these things? To attract more users and to generate revenue. As the OP said, what are you going to do to solve Reddit's income problem? This isn't a technical issue, the technical piece is straightforward and well-known. They can't really push for advertising until they eliminate 3rd party API access to the content. That or they have to start charging a usage fee. Wh…

"Think this all the way through - why did Reddit do these things? To attract more users and to generate revenue."

I'd love to see the numbers of how these features actually amplified the experience. My gut tells me not much at all. Tech companies have huge misses all the time trying to make more money and often at the cost of the long-term success of the product.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit?

#64

Post by luma »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #56
Maxion wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One big issue with Reddit is that it is mismanaged. With the revenue they are generating ($456 million USD), it should be more than enough to run a site like Reddit. Over the last few years they've invested heavily in things that are very unrelated to the core features of the site, such as NFTs and other odd things that are barely visible, while firing people (Victoria & the death of r/IAMA, and snackexchange) that b…

> One big issue with Reddit is that it is mismanaged. With the revenue they are generating ($456 million USD), it should be more than enough to run a site like Reddit. So who gets fired? How many people are you willing to make unemployed? What services get removed? What improvements stop? Realistically, the reason they don't make a profit is they're aiming for growth and they're getting the growth.

> So who gets fired?

Everybody involved with the NFTs, with this API decision, with everything about New Reddit, the dumb crypto currencies, do we need to go on? It's a long list.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit?

#65

Post by throw_m239339 »

kkfdkerpoe wrote: post #55
throw_m239339 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why those who have tried have turned into racist pornography filled shit holes. While some reddit alternatives might qualify as "racist", they've done a very good job at not being "porn filled shit holes", unlike reddit. In fact, most of the porn spam on these websites are images or videos hotlinked from... reddit.

How exactly is Reddit a "porn filled shit hole"? I don't see any porn in the vast majority of subreddits. Nobody forces you to visit the rest, and they are typically even marked adult-only. Besides, are porn and racism really the only questionable things in social media? What about extreme violence, videos where real people get shot or blown up? Somehow messed up American society thinks that violence is quite okay th…

> How exactly is Reddit a "porn filled shit hole"? I don't see any porn in the vast majority of subreddits. Nobody forces you to visit the rest, and they are typically even marked adult-only.

My bad, I should have said "reddit is a porn spammer filled shit hole" on top of really being a "porn filled shit hole" /s

The fact that you feign being oblivious to all the CSAM, depraved porn and revenge porn hosted on reddit really doesn't make any difference.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit?

#66

Post by RealStickman_ »

kornhole wrote: post #53
artisanspam wrote: post #20

Lemmy is a federated attempt at being a Reddit competitor but I think it has quite a bit of work to do before it’s viable. https://lemmy.ml/

That is just one instance. I believe the .ML stands for Marxist Leninist if that is the community you want to join. There are many other instances sprouting up, and you can spin up your own pretty easily. Like any fediverse instance, the amount of work to maintain and moderate it is dependent on the number of people on it. https://join-lemmy.org/instances

> I believe the .ML stands for Marxist Leninist

According to the link you posted, I think you're talkong about lemmygrad.ml. lemmy.ml is hosted by the original Lemmy developers.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit?

#67

Post by that_guy_iain »

luma wrote: post #64
that_guy_iain wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One big issue with Reddit is that it is mismanaged. With the revenue they are generating ($456 million USD), it should be more than enough to run a site like Reddit. So who gets fired? How many people are you willing to make unemployed? What services get removed? What improvements stop? Realistically, the reason they don't make a profit is they're aiming for growth and they're getting the growth.

> So who gets fired? Everybody involved with the NFTs, with this API decision, with everything about New Reddit, the dumb crypto currencies, do we need to go on? It's a long list.

So basically you're firing everyone? I bet you called Musk stupid for firing so many people at Twitter too.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit?

#69

Post by joenot443 »

taylodl wrote: post #61
eugeniub wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit used to have pretty low overhead. You couldn't upload/host videos directly on Reddit, you could only share links or create self-posts. They didn't have all these superfluous features that they have now like live chat, push notifications, cryptocurrency wallets, first-party mobile apps, etc. A "classical" version of Reddit would be a fraction of the development and hosting cost compared to modern Reddit, especi…

Think this all the way through - why did Reddit do these things? To attract more users and to generate revenue. As the OP said, what are you going to do to solve Reddit's income problem? This isn't a technical issue, the technical piece is straightforward and well-known. They can't really push for advertising until they eliminate 3rd party API access to the content. That or they have to start charging a usage fee. Wh…

I’m pretty convinced that given the userbase, there exists a small team of exceptional marketers, engineers, and product designers who could come up with a “classic” reddit which could operate at a profit. A combination of ads, API limiting, and a monthly premium charge for some super turbo user features.

The product itself is _done_. The code has been _written_, one can host their own open source reddit this very moment. Image/video storage has long been a problem for reddit, so perhaps users will have to get used to YouTube and Imgur again.

I think people are making too many excuses for Reddit when they act as if the product itself is unmonetizable. It’s not, they largely just hired too aggressively and made some design decisions which have been broadly poorly received.

They’ve effectively owned the space since 2008. I think in another world with different leadership Reddit could be in a much healthier position than it is right now.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit?

#70

Post by taylodl »

Madmallard wrote: post #63
taylodl wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think this all the way through - why did Reddit do these things? To attract more users and to generate revenue. As the OP said, what are you going to do to solve Reddit's income problem? This isn't a technical issue, the technical piece is straightforward and well-known. They can't really push for advertising until they eliminate 3rd party API access to the content. That or they have to start charging a usage fee. Wh…

"Think this all the way through - why did Reddit do these things? To attract more users and to generate revenue." I'd love to see the numbers of how these features actually amplified the experience. My gut tells me not much at all. Tech companies have huge misses all the time trying to make more money and often at the cost of the long-term success of the product.

They're never satisfied with the status quo, are they? Always have to grow, grow, grow!
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